Project Gutenberg is a digital library volunteer effort that takes old public domain and converts them into freely available eBooks for the benefit of the general public. Founded back in 1971, the library now has over 42,000 items in its collection.

Among the books in its collection are a number of old books on the subject of photography. One such book is the 1881 title, The Art and Practice of Silver Printing by Capt. Abney and H. P. Robinson (shown above).
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Opened in 1949, the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York is the world’s oldest museum dedicated to photography. It’s world renowned for its collection of more than 400,000 photos and negatives dating back to when the medium was first invented.

If you would like to check out some of the museum’s photos but can’t make the trip out to Rochester, there’s now a sleek new way for you to browse the imagery. The museum announced this week that it has become the first photo museum to join the Google Art Project.
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Necessity may be the mother of invention, but laziness is definitely its father. Case in point, here’s an interesting tidbit of imaging history: the first webcam ever was actually invented by lazy students at Cambridge University who didn’t want to waste a trip to the nearby coffee pot if it was going to be empty when they got there. Read more…

In 2010, photographer Seth Taras created a series of photographs for a worldwide marketing campaign for the History Channel with the message “Know Where You Stand.” The photographer shot photos at locations around the world where major historical events happened, and then blended old photos showing those events from the same perspective. It’s the same “then and now” concept that has become quite popular over the past few years.
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In September 1933, LIFE magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt traveled to Geneva to document a meeting of the League of Nations. One of the political figures at the gathering was Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitlers most devout underlings and a man who became known for his “homicidal anti-Semitism.”

Eisenstaedt was a German-born Jew. Not knowing this at first, Goebbels was initially friendly toward Eisenstaedt, who was able to capture a number of photos showing the Nazi politician in a good and cheerful mood (as in the photograph above).
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William Eggleston didn’t invent color photography, but his landmark 1976 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art gave it dignity, and began the four-decade process of acceptance by curators and collectors as an art form to rival oil painting.

Shot in 1970, “Untitled (Memphis)” – shown above – was one of the 75 photos in the show, and also featured on the cover of the catalogue. Now it’s included in a retrospective of Eggleston’s early work at the Metropolitan.
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Did you know that the White House was completely gutted and rebuilt on the inside between 1949 and 1952? After decades of poor maintenance, the building was in danger of collapsing in 1948, which forced President Harry Truman to move out and commission a complete gutting and rebuilding of the building’s insides.

The U.S. National Archives has been publishing photographs showing the gutted White House to its Flickr photostream.
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Last week we featured some Sears catalog ads for camera kits from back in 1900, and shared how complete camera kits were selling for just $15.35. Now fast forward a century to the 2000s, when this advertisement appeared 9 years ago. You could buy a “massive” 256 metabyte SD card or a 512MB CF card for your camera for just $100 and $150 (respectively)! For about $100 these days, you can buy a 128 gigabyte SD card.

256GB SD cards cost a hefty $700 these days, but in another 9 years, we’ll almost certainly be poking fun at that price tag as well.

Image credit: Photograph by gfraser and used with permission

Want to buy all the camera equipment you need to start a photography business for just $15.35? All you’ll need is… a time machine! Reddit user sneeden found this Sears Roebuck and Co. consumer guide for the fall of 1900. Two of the pages inside the catalog are for view camera kits that can help anyone “start in a pleasant and good paying business.”
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In in 1946, the United States conducted a series of nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in what’s known as Operation Crossroads. A total of two bombs were detonated to test the effects nuclear blasts had on naval warships. The second, named Baker, was the world’s first nuke to be detonated underwater. Due to the unique properties of underwater explosions, the Baker test produced a number of unique photographs that the world had never seen before.
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